PREGNANCY
EDUCATION
INCOME
EARLY MARRIAGE
NOW
Girl Power The developing world holds an overlooked resource:
millions of adolescent girls. Often forced to leave school and start families by
their mid-teens, many fall prey to violence, disease, and complications of
childbirth. Studies show that keeping these girls in school and delaying marriage benefits
both them and their communities by reducing infant mortality, increasing family income,
and slowing the spread of HIV. Groups including the World Bank, the UN Adolescent Girls
Task Force, and movements such as the Girl Effect are looking at ways to make girls
more valuable to their families as breadwinners than as child brides.
---Margaret G. Zackowitz
PHOTO: LYNN JOHNSON
Making a Better Life e poverty cycle can be broken when girls stay in school.
Education creates its own cycle. According to the World Bank,
a child remains in school four to six months longer for each completed
year of a mother's formal education.
In developing nations (China excepted) about one in
seven girls marries before age 15. If their daughters
do the same, many will be grandmothers before 30.
Complications of pregnancy are the leading cause
of death for girls ages 15 -19 worldwide. Adolescent
girls are also more likely to die in childbirth.
Completion of secondary school
can increase a girl's average future
earnings by as much as 18 percent.
The Poverty Cycle
Eva Nkirote,
a student at
Saint Annmona
School in rural
eastern Kenya,
participates in
a tree-planting
program at
the school.
Says Esther
Muthoni, Saint
Annmona's
founder, "If you
educate a girl,
you educate
a nation."
7
SEVEN
BILLION
The Education Cycle